21–30 of 40 posts
20 years ago, when I was a bright eyed graduate student, I was mesmerized by MEMS (micro-electro mechanical systems), which promised similar revolution. I learnt about 'artificial muscles', and MIT Technology Review even ran a cover issue on how MEMS will revolutionize everything. This article could have been written in the year 2000 except it would have mentioned MEMS then. Now there is no mention of it. I'm older a…
Also, as Richard Feynman pointed out (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eRCygdW--c) at small scales water is thick like honey so it's probably more efficient to use a rotating turbine mechanism (i.e. flagella) for propulsion rather than trying to shrink paddles down to micron sizes.
And almost foreign material that you put in your body will eventually be covered in bacterial biofilms. So might as well learn how to program and control the bacteria in the first place.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anything outside of telecommunications or earth observation. Human spaceflight is a different can of worms with the additional dilemma of that no large hardware failures can occur. Rockets fail a lot, people dying is bad for PR, and thus you need a really good reason to send a person. The thing then is what do you do with people in space that makes enough money to warrant it? Basically nothing. Thus the lack of any h…
I think theoretically, you could make money refining rare minerals from asteroids (like platinum, gold, rare earths). The issue is that since the startup cost is so high, the mission is very risky (conservatively, it would probably cost in the 10s of billions to be able to refine anything at scale) and 10s of billions worth of rare minerals won't stay worth 10s of billions since the world only needs so much minerals…
There are people who want to go into space to be like Captain Kirk or some other scifi character. Some of them are rich or wealthy and can afford the $100K a week on the Moon.
Thing is a moon-base has to avoid meteorite strikes and other hazards. If the water or oxygen gets contaminated that's it for everyone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anything outside of telecommunications or earth observation. Human spaceflight is a different can of worms with the additional dilemma of that no large hardware failures can occur. Rockets fail a lot, people dying is bad for PR, and thus you need a really good reason to send a person. The thing then is what do you do with people in space that makes enough money to warrant it? Basically nothing. Thus the lack of any h…
I think theoretically, you could make money refining rare minerals from asteroids (like platinum, gold, rare earths). The issue is that since the startup cost is so high, the mission is very risky (conservatively, it would probably cost in the 10s of billions to be able to refine anything at scale) and 10s of billions worth of rare minerals won't stay worth 10s of billions since the world only needs so much minerals…
Breakeven D-T fusion has never been demonstrated, at any scale. ITER won't even attempt D-T fusion until 2035, and then you need to figure out how to scale the reactor down until it doesn't cost $50 billion and 50 years to build, and also increase the collision energy until it can actually do D-He3 fusion, or even higher, true aneutronic He3-He3 fusion. Yes, yes, Stellarator, Polywell. Neither have been built.
Or you can just do solar and batteries. Which exist today.
>space based solar
Tom Arnold did the best post on SBS back in 2012: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/03/space-based-solar-power/ Depending on what downlink power density you're willing to tolerate, how big of a transmit dish you can assemble in orbit, and how big of a receive array you want to build on the ground, you only get maybe four times the power density of the sunlight falling on the ground taken up by the rectenna array.
Awful lot of work to go to just to get four times more power per square meter on the ground.
And if you've got the room for a rectenna array 4 km across for SBS, you might want to just build a regular terrestrial solar array 8km across instead, and save a few dozen billion dollars in launch costs.
This is fantastic, but another approach would be to use the things that are already small and learn how they work, and then maybe reprogram them (i.e. bacteria). Also, as Richard Feynman pointed out ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eRCygdW--c ) at small scales water is thick like honey so it's probably more efficient to use a rotating turbine mechanism (i.e. flagella) for propulsion rather than trying to shrink pad…
> Challenges remain. For robots injected into the brain, lasers would not work as the power source. (Dr. Miskin said magnetic fields might be an alternative.) He wants to make other robots swim rather than crawl. (For tiny machines, swimming can be arduous as water becomes viscous, like honey.).
20 years ago, when I was a bright eyed graduate student, I was mesmerized by MEMS (micro-electro mechanical systems), which promised similar revolution. I learnt about 'artificial muscles', and MIT Technology Review even ran a cover issue on how MEMS will revolutionize everything. This article could have been written in the year 2000 except it would have mentioned MEMS then. Now there is no mention of it. I'm older a…
The only foolish part of your story is over-investing (and over-selling to the media/public) too early before you have any tangible results.
20 years ago, when I was a bright eyed graduate student, I was mesmerized by MEMS (micro-electro mechanical systems), which promised similar revolution. I learnt about 'artificial muscles', and MIT Technology Review even ran a cover issue on how MEMS will revolutionize everything. This article could have been written in the year 2000 except it would have mentioned MEMS then. Now there is no mention of it. I'm older a…
They've revolutionized some parts of how we live our daily lives, though not in the same way innovations like the car, airplane, computer, or cellphone have.
I expect microbots will be similar. After a decade or two of hard work and billions of dollars invested, they will quietly revolutionize some other small parts of our lives. Meanwhile, the rest of the world moves on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microelectromechanical_systems...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anything outside of telecommunications or earth observation. Human spaceflight is a different can of worms with the additional dilemma of that no large hardware failures can occur. Rockets fail a lot, people dying is bad for PR, and thus you need a really good reason to send a person. The thing then is what do you do with people in space that makes enough money to warrant it? Basically nothing. Thus the lack of any h…
I think theoretically, you could make money refining rare minerals from asteroids (like platinum, gold, rare earths). The issue is that since the startup cost is so high, the mission is very risky (conservatively, it would probably cost in the 10s of billions to be able to refine anything at scale) and 10s of billions worth of rare minerals won't stay worth 10s of billions since the world only needs so much minerals…
1. Sending most of the people there instead of destroying slowly but surely our environment here
2. As an insurance against point 1 failing.
I really like the slaughterbots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw